Monday August 23, 2010 – A rainy, cool day: perfect for watching dancers in the studio. Choreographer John-Mark Owen is preparing for an appearance at the DanceNOW Festival on September 9th and today he working with dancer Julie Voshell on his duet Unam Ceylum, set to music of Heinrich Biber.
This was Julie’s first rehearsal of this piece and they’d been working on it for a half-hour when I arrived. Julie and John-Mark are great friends so it was a very easy-going, laugh-filled atmosphere. They watched a performance video of the piece and talked their way thru it, then began trying some phrases and marking various passages. In this way, Julie learned the basic structure and key elements of the piece in less than an hour.
It’s really interesting to see how dancers assimilate verbal cues and translate them into their own language of movement. John-Mark has scheduled plenty of rehearsal time but I think they’ll have the duet at performance level very soon; they can spend the remaining sessions polishing the fine points.
Unam Ceylum is one movement of John-Mark’s memorable and deeply personal TRIPTYCH: three duets danced by the same couple which trace the development and dissolving of a relationship. The music is achingly beautiful and the work has an intrinsic spiritual quality.
The studio was rather dark for taking pictures today; I was wishing Kokyat was there with his two cameras. The photos here were shot with my little Lumix.
Oberon's Glade 
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